Seven years ago I wrote one of my “Career Highlights” articles about Bill Maher and at the time I said that despite his controversial viewpoints and tendency to provoke and offend, he was a funny comedian and one of my favorite talk show hosts. But a funny thing happened in the seven years since I wrote that article. I became one of those people who he provokes and offends. In fact he annoys me so much these days with his dumb political takes that it has gotten to the point where I feel the need to write a follow-up article about him, because I have come to realize that the Bill Maher who I thought I knew is a lot different than the Bill Maher I see now. Of course I’m currently writing this in the aftermath of the controversy surrounding his decision to accept a dinner invitation from Donald Trump at the White House and yes, that’s partly why I decided to write this, but as a regular viewer of Real Time, everything I am about to say in this article has actually been a long time coming, and this just feels like a good time to finally let it all out.

It isn’t just one issue that I have with Bill Maher. There are several things about him that irritate the hell out of me that I have noticed frequently as I observe his comedic style, conversations and behavior on his HBO talk show, so in order to organize my thoughts, I decided to list seven specific things about Bill Maher that annoy me the most.

1. He talks about things he doesn’t understand

In a rare moment of a talk show guest actually standing up to a talk show host and calling them out on their B.S., Ben Affleck once actually called Maher out on the air for his hatred of Muslims as well as his various insensitive remarks about Islam. This is actually a part of a pattern I noticed with Maher where he will often make fun of anyone and everyone who is different from him in any way, whether it’s religious people or even people who are a different race, gender, class or age than him. And he has done it so freely that it has made him a lot of enemies. These days his main targets seem to be anyone who is young, “woke” and has pronouns in their bios. A group of people who he regularly calls “stupid” (I maintain that Gen Z is by far the most misunderstood and underestimated generation). Other examples of Maher’s tone deaf remarks include comparing the “Me Too” movement to McCarthyism, comparing “woke” culture to Chairman Mao fascism, regularly ridiculing Palestine sympathizers for being “terrorist sympathizers,” and constantly badmouthing Democrats for being too radical even as Republicans become cruel maniacs and spineless Trump sycophants. Bill Maher often thinks anyone who disagrees with him is an idiot, but he might want to put some wooden boards over the glass house he’s living in.

2. He downplays the pandemic

During one interview with the very pro-science Seth MacFarlane following the spread of  the COVID-19 pandemic, Maher went on an anti-lockdown rant and said that the medical community is not trustworthy (I appreciated how MacFarlane pushed back against that statement) and if you regularly watched Real Time during the heart of the pandemic, you know that Bill Maher frequently talks about how doctors and scientists often make mistakes and how that made him less trusting of health experts in general. He even resisted taking the vaccine initially, and he makes fun of people who wear masks (another group of people who he calls “idiots”) because he thinks they are overreacting. Because of this stance, you probably could have guessed that he was one of those people who felt the government overreached when they closed everything down (including his own show) and made everyone socially distance themselves. Given how many people died because of that pandemic, how simple it is to put on a mask and how privileged Maher is as someone rich enough to be able to stay safe and healthy during a deadly disease, I couldn’t help but feel like this was the most whiny and selfish behavior I’ve ever seen a grown man demonstrate in public. Especially when he started complaining about how, thanks to the pandemic, he ruined his streak of never missing a single one of his talk show appearances. I have some advice for him: grow the hell up?

3. He normalizes dangerous people

Ever since the days of Politically Incorrect, Maher has often platformed conservatives as well as far-right extremists on his show, debating them the same way he would debate any other guest (often harshly, to his credit), and there is nothing wrong with doing this … in theory. I agree that having a friendly conversation with a conservative should be allowed and like Maher, I dislike political tribalism. My problem with it has more to do with the intentions of the Republicans being interviewed than it has to do with Maher’s intentions. Because what Maher may not realize is that many (not all, but many) of the Republicans who agree to talk with him do not actually care about reaching across the aisle and working with Democrats. A lot of them just want to use Maher’s friendliness to normalize themselves and their POVs. Some of these guests, including media savvy people like Steve Bannon and Megyn Kelly, would much rather promote conspiracy theories and dehumanizing language that does not deserve to be taken as seriously as Maher seems to take it. Maher’s argument against me is that if he didn’t platform these folks, that wouldn’t suddenly make them go away. He would rather attempt to reach people than shun them forever like we’re in a tribe, and he would of course tell me to stop being a dumb millennial and learn how to talk to people who I hate like a mature adult. Again, there is nothing wrong with what he’s saying in THEORY. But I don’t know who he thinks is actually benefitting from broadcasting his conversations with so many liars and opportunists (and in some cases, racists and antisemites) when all he really seems to be doing is treating conspiracy theorists and extremists like ordinary, respectable people. But I wouldn’t expect an old rich White guy to understand or be aware of the dangers of normalizing hate language so this is not exactly surprising.

4. He is selective with his outrage

He complains about a lot of issues, often during his “New Rules” segment at the end of the show, but he often leaves out facts and details about the issues he is complaining about, and they are often suspiciously the facts that would destroy his entire core premise were he to point them out. Such as when he called out Americans for being obese and said that it was a result of not eating healthy enough, while at the same time failing to point out that healthy food is often more expensive than junk food, and also essentially failing to realize that fat people do not need to be lectured about health (especially from a thin person) because believe me, society has been making it clear for decades how it feels about fat people and they are fully aware. Pressing so hard on the obesity issue is weirdly selective and ultimately pointless, and it sometimes even comes off as simply bullying fat people when you hear some of the jokes he makes about it.

5. He is a phony

Bill Maher often presents himself as the sane person in the room and a no-holds-barred truth teller who neither fears retaliation nor is beholden to any one political party. But that is a persona. He doesn’t actually care about the truth. He only cares about what he THINKS is the truth and perhaps subconsciously what he wants the truth to be. This is one of the things about him that annoys me the most, and ironically it’s also partly why I became a fan of him in the first place: his self-perception as the ultimate truth teller. He may even honestly believe everything he says is true, but Keith Olbermann recently said something telling in the aftermath of Maher’s dinner with Trump, which is that Olbermann has known Maher ever since the seventies and that Maher has always been a “shameless opportunist.” Which says so much.

6. He is predictable

Arguably worst of all, depending on where you put the weight on the scale of ideology vs. entertainment, is how utterly predictable Bill Maher’s comedy has become recently. I can always tell when I watch Real Time that he’s constantly dying to make fun of liberals for being too “woke,” Gen Z for being dumb, and how much better everything used to be in the old days. Maybe I was naive back in the 2000s when I first became a fan of Bill Maher for his witty anti-religion, anti-Republican comedy, but did he always act like this much of an old man? Enough already with the whiny boomer routine, man. We get it. The world is changing, you can’t keep up, and you’re taking your anger out on the younger generation for being more relevant than you. Is your ego so big that you really thought you would be the hip guy forever? Which brings me to …

7. He is egotistical

Boy is he! Back in the nineties with his talk show Politically Incorrect, Maher helped usher in an era of political entertainment that pushed more boundaries and blended news with comedy with a shameless and unapologetic bravado. A style that The Daily Show adopted around the time ABC poached Politically Incorrect from Comedy Central, and something that Fox News also took lessons from (as well as Donald Trump himself). Bill Maher became a household name because of that show and when he moved from ABC to HBO his fans followed him to premium cable. Unfortunately I think this success may have gone to his head. It’s one thing when I see him generally act like a rude jackass with zero people skills during his interviews (which happens way too often, even when he isn’t talking about politics or making jokes), but his behavior is even worse when his insecurity kicks in. At his best, Maher knows how to land a punchline really well and he has a lot of knowledge about history which often makes for some meaty geopolitical discussions on the Real Time panel. But at his worst, he’s a sociopathic snob whose ego is so big that he literally calls out the audience for not laughing at his jokes or clapping at his statements, and it is perhaps the most cringe-worthy thing I’ve ever seen. Dude, I know you’re a comedian, but if your whole persona is that you’re the provocateur who doesn’t care what others think, maybe you should do a better job pretending to be that guy.

Some people accuse Maher of being more politically right-leaning than he used to be, and based on everything you’ve just read in this article, you may have picked up on that. But Maher often fights back against the critics who point out his conservative turn (which he claims is not true) by saying he hasn’t changed – it’s the country that has changed. And you know what? There’s actually some truth to that. Because yes, Maher has pretty much been this guy throughout his whole career. A lot of people just never noticed it until now because back in the nineties, Gen-Z, transgender people, pandemics, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other people and topics that he regularly rails against, were not dominating mainstream news. But Bill Maher is also wrong, because it’s not so much that the country has changed for the worse as much as the country’s view of Bill Maher has changed for the worse. He was THE political comedian of his time, for sure. But as people evolved and the culture changed, Bill Maher’s POV slowly became the old-fashioned POV and now people, especially leftists and young people, regularly make fun of him for his hypocrisy, his detached view of reality and his bone-headed takes. Far from being the sane one in the room – he has now become the one who everyone in the room mocks.

By the way, I know Bill Maher has been on the air for 30 years and he has a ton of faithful fans and viewers who love him for “telling it like it is” and have kept his show popular, and I also know that Maher would counter my argument that he is out of touch by pointing to this fan base as an example of his relevance as a promoter of common sense in America, but all that proves to me is that there are a lot of television viewers out there who are possibly also out of touch.